According to HTC, the HTC 10 Evo—known as the HTC Bolt and sold exclusively by Sprint in the US—is the ideal phone for the lucrative £450-£500 smartphone market (its exact price is TBC). It's a market dominated by companies that sell last-generation flagships which once sold for upwards of £600 at cut-down prices, it says, and phones from the likes of Huawei and ZTE that contain own-brand chipsets rather than full-blown Qualcomm Snapdragons. The HTC 10 Evo, with its full-metal body, large 1440p display, and Snapdragon SoC should, on paper at least, cover that segment nicely.

Except I don't know why anyone in their right mind would buy one.

The HTC 10 Evo is powered by a Snapdragon 810, an octa-core SoC that first made an appearance in 2014, and was used in HTC's M9 during 2015. Which is not to say that the 810 makes the Evo slow. Indeed, performance under Android 7.0 Nougat was fine during a brief hands-on. But a brand new, unlocked 32GB HTC 10—which Ars named one of the best Android smartphones released this year—costs less than £500 from numerous online stores. This is a phone that packs the latest (or near-enough latest) Snapdragon 820, 4GB of RAM, and a 3,000mAh battery inside a slick metal chassis.

In the US, where the HTC Bolt is sold for $599 on Sprint, you can buy a a brand new, unlocked HTC 10 directly from HTC's website for $499.

How HTC expects anyone to buy a phone that has a two-year-old SoC when it also sells one with a much newer chip—for the same price or less—is a mystery. Hell, OnePlus will sell you the OnePlus 3T for just £400 ($439)—and that comes with a Snapdragon 821, 6GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and similarly great build-quality and materials. It's hard to see where the Evo makes sense.

But what the hey, let's give it a go.

The HTC 10 Evo is well built.

Mark Walton

There's a microSD card slot for memory expansion.

Mark Walton

The volume rocker and power button.

Mark Walton

There's no headphone jack, just a USB Type-C port.

Mark Walton

HTC includes USB-C headphones.

Mark Walton

The front-facing camera has been given a boost to 8MP.

Mark Walton

The Evo alongside a Google Pixel XL.

Mark Walton

And the rear.

Mark Walton

The Evo is comfy phone to hold, despite the large screen.

Mark Walton

Further Reading

Outwardly, the HTC 10 Evo shares the same design language as the HTC 10, with an all-metal body and a clean front-fascia free from any lurid branding. Because the bright and colourful 1440p LCD display has been widened out to 5.5 inches (dropping the pixel density to 534 PPI—not that you'd ever notice), the curve on the rear has been reduced, resulting in a much flatter, and arguably more modern-feeling back. It's a wee bit thinner than the HTC 10 too at 8.09mm, and thanks to its small bezels the Evo is surprisingly comfortable to hold for such a large phone.

The fast fingerprint-scanner on the front of the HTC 10 has been brought over and works just as well, along with the capacitive back and multitasking buttons. Both the front- and rear-facing cameras have been given a boost, going from 5MP to 8MP on the front, and 12MP to 16MP on the rear. However, they are slightly worse in all other respects, with HTC replacing the fast laser-autofocus with phase-detection autofocus, and dropping the aperture from f/1.8 to f/2.0.

As mentioned, the Evo is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 810, a 64-bit SoC made up of four ARM Cortex A57 CPU cores, four ARM Cortex A53 cores, a 2.0GHz clock speed, and an Adreno 430 GPU. That's paired with 32GB of microSD expandable storage and 3GB of RAM. The 810 is still fast, even on the GPU side, but given how quickly Android is dropping support for older SoCs these days, it's not the best idea to spend £500 on a phone with one inside. That's not to mention all the heat and power improvements built into the 820, which help with battery life.

That said, HTC has stuck a large 3,200mAh battery inside the Evo, along with Quick Charge 2.0 support, which it claims will last "all day." Android 7.0 is included and essentially stock (hooray!), and for the first time, HTC has made a somewhat water-resistant phone too. The Evo is IP57 rated for immersion between 15 centimetres and one metre of water.

Despite HTC normally banging on about audio—and admittedly, I'm a bit obsessed with it too—I haven't mentioned the Evo's headphone jack yet. That's because, like the Apple iPhone 7, it doesn't have one. Instead, headphone audio is pumped out via the USB 2.0 Type-C jack on the bottom of the phone. And, just like the iPhone 7, it's a silly move that makes things just that little bit less convenient for consumers. Sure, HTC bundles in a pair of good "high-res certified" in-ear headphones. And yes, wireless Bluetooth headphones work fine.

But the beauty of the headphone jack is in its ubiquity: wireless headphones run out of charge. Wires on wired headphones, the USB-C connector included, often break. Removing the option of plugging in any pair you like is a user inconvenience that could otherwise be avoided. What's more, nearly all high-end audiophile headphones are wired.

Still, HTC's solution is better than Apple's. All the audio processing is done inside the phone—with the same excellent 24-bit DAC and amplifier used in the HTC 10—instead of in the headphones. That means unlike Apple's terrible-sounding, and expensive, dongle, any cheap USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter will let you use your existing headphones just fine. It's a shame HTC doesn't give you one in the Evo's box, though.

Further Reading

It's another strange omission in what is altogether a strange phone. Either HTC doesn't know its own products or those of the competition, or (more likely) it's spinning up the PR machine in an attempt to shift a few units of a phone created for specific (and quite frankly weird) carrier demands in the US over here in the UK and Europe. I doubt anyone is going to fall for it.

The HTC 10 Evo will be sold exclusively through HTC.com later this month in two colours: "Gunmetal" and "Glacier Silver." It will not be sold via networks.